Grandchildren gone - NOT amateur radio

Today, the last of our grandchildren went home to Kent with their mum and dad. The house now seems very quiet. At least it is tidy, although we prefer it with a slight mess and them here. They are all great kids.

Sunspots and 10m - Wed Dec 30th 2015

Solar flux has dropped to 102. Sunspot number is 54 (K=0) and the 10m propagation is expected be  "poor". I reset/re-synced the 10m WSPR beacon and am currently active on 10m WSPR and 6m WSPR, although no spots as yet on either band.

10m WSPR

Sorry to report that my 10m 500mW WSPR beacon was not spotted at all today. It has been on since mid-morning and I was surprised not to get spotted even once. The WSPR beacon is still on but I doubt it will get spotted now until the morning, if at all, tomorrow. In the morning I shall do a full reset of the 10m WSPR beacon.

FT817 replacement this coming year?

It is rumoured that Yaesu will, at long last, announce a replacement to the FT817 at Dayton this year. Lots of people are awaiting this rig, which is only about 4 years too late!  If I was Yaesu I'd have launched this on the upward slope of the last sunspot peak.  In their infinite wisdom (or plain stupidity?) they have still to announce such a radio. If they are to capitalise on the replacement demand they'd better make sure it has some really nice features and get the price right. I cannot imagine it making it to Europe much before autumn 2016 or even Christmas.

By the time it is available here in Europe we are likely to be suffering with relatively low (and falling) sunspot numbers. If I was Yaesu I'd think about offering 15m, 12m, 10m, 6m and 4m, 2m and 70cms (and possibly 1296MHz) and not offer the lower HF bands at all. In the next 20-30 years the VHF bands will be more important. 15m,12m , 10m, 6m and 4m are all useful for Es especially in the summer months. With just a few watts of SSB one can work much of Europe with just a whip antenna and QRP.

Lawns - NOT amateur radio

At least 3 people were cutting their grass today, even though  it was Dec 29th!  We have had the mildest December I can ever recall.  OK, things could change to heavy snow very quickly, but if things do continue as they are, I shall be cutting our lawns all winter, which would be so different from normal.

Dual banders at stupid prices!

This from Steve G1KQH earlier:-

Oh the price just gets daft!

How can they make them and ship them for 12 quid never mind make a profit?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Baofeng-Black-UV-5R-V2-Dual-Band-136-174-400-520-MHz-FM-Ham-Two-way-Radio-HOT-/321944900286?hash=item4af56952be:g:XgUAAOSwKrxUY~G9

Hang on!

Its just got dafter!

Dual band for what £9.99!!!!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Handheld-Radio-Scanner-2-Way-Digital-Transceiver-Portable-Antenna-Police/321947446216?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140122125356%26meid%3Dd51034fd97fc4f36a82b39263925807d%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D6%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D321944900286

73 Steve G1KQH
http://www.g1kqh.talktalk.net/

Sunspots and 10m - Tues Dec 29th 2015

Solar flux is 113 today and sunspot number 64 (K=1).  The forecast for 10m propagation remains "poor" today. I QSYed from 50mW on 20m to 500mW on 10m around 1030z this morning.  So far, no spots received on 10m WSPR using the W5OLF 10m WSPR beacon.

Swallow - NOT amateur radio

A swallow (migrant bird that usually leaves for South Africa mid September) was seen in Bantham, South Devon on Dec 26th. This is incredibly late. If we have a mild winter it is possible this bird will over-winter.  I have not seen any records of these birds surviving through the winter before but this winter has been very mild so far. The best chances are on or near mild coasts where there is a plentiful supply of insects near seaweed.

More test results with WSJT-X V1.6

This came in earlier from Alan G8LCO. It seems that WSJT-X V1.6 is definitely the way to go.

Jan found out that his misleading results were due to having two programs on the same PC, now he sees the improvement on 1.60

David did a 8.5 Hour test and saw 23.7%  more spots on 1.60

I have posted a note of my test results on the LF group so the story is out now! The improvement is staggering!  And I do like the way that the facilities have been put together. The Hopping Scheduler is a very nice way of making clean band changes without the "Wrong Band" risk as well as being a great tool in it's own way. You also don't need to run a spec anl as well to see what is happening.

It seems to be a very nice package all around  with the JT modes as well. But it will take a bit longer to explore all of the possabilities.  Open Source software can really be fantastic when it is done well.

This was the very detailed analysis Alan G8LCO posted on the RSGB LF group:

WSPR is now included in the WSJT package as an alternate mode alongside JT65 and JT9. I loaded the free software just before Christmas running into some issues because I had not changed the audio settings. After changing to the settings in the instructons everything worked.

The WSPR mode use is a little different, band hopping is available so instead of manually having to change bands waiting for decoding to end etc etc you can now preset the next band(s) making the band change quick and certain. If every user picked up on this feature the "Wrong Band" issue which messes up the logs could be a past issue! that would be a very significant "WIN" for the WSPR database users!

The decoding now uses a two pass process, strong signals are processed then removed allowing weaker signals to be decoded. This makes a very substantial difference!

On Dec 27 I ran a comparison, I used my normal antenna and Rx to produce audio which then went to two seperate Rx's, a laptop running WSPR 2.12 which was a known good performer and another PC running WSJT-X 1.60. I chose to listen to 160m as it was busier than 620m at that time. There is also the prospect of TA spots.  The test was run overnight.

It was quickly evident that the two pass decoder was producing more spots than the stand alone WSPR 2.12

In some time slots 1.60 produced 6 decodes to 2.12's  3 decodes !  The main reason was that when two signals were close the old decoder only  found the stronger signal wheras the two pass decoder seemed to decode all of the signals visible on the spectral display. I had decodes of signals 2 Hz apart with 20dB amplitude differences whereas 2.12 lost weaker signals 5Hz apart. Some -10dB signals decoded  1 in 6 times on 2.12 but every time on 1.60. SNR's were broadly the same however a few signals decoded 1,2 or 3 dB higher on 1.60.

One feature of WSPR 2.12 is that high level signals seem to top out around +13dB so very strong signals peg at +13dB or so. The 1.60 software has produced SNR numbers up to +20dB so we can better see crocs blasting away. Hitherto I have run Spectrum Lab alongside WSPR so I am well aware of the levels of some stations!

For those used to 2.12 WSPR the new version takes a bit of getting used to as there are significant differences  and many new facilities that extend the way we can use the software.

The spectral display has seperate gain and bright controls with the waterfall having it's own controls. There are several pallets and display widths to select and an early decode option that displays the decode earlier than 2.12 does. There is also a 2 min "thermometer" style display at the lower edge indicating the time in the slot cycle  and a box giving the  progression of the four time periods in the Hopping Shedule, night, dawn grey line, day and sunset grey line. That I found very useful.

For me the package seems to work outstandingly well, decoding is better than ever and quicker, the spectral display and waterfall are flexible without over complication and the very clumsy old style band changing is now very quick, risk free and certain. The development people and the testers have done a very good job.

However decoding weak signals is not simple, different people have different equipment, noise levels and operating practices. I would advise against running different decode software at the same time on one machine, there is a possibility of misleading results. I would like to thank Jan, David and Roger for helping clarify matters and their independent testing.

Alan

G8LCO 

Tiredness - NOT amateur radio

It seems that improvements following my stroke over 2 years ago come in their own time.  For the last few days I seem to be less tired than I was after breakfast. Today I managed to do 2 physical jobs right after breakfast with no rest. I still feel giddy on my feet and have poor voice and thin liquid swallow.